There is no shortage of products and services for individuals who desire to improve themselves, whether through acquiring new skills, learning new facts, enhancing their physical fitness, or through other types of activities. However, these existing products and services, even when ostensibly aimed at improving an individual's interpersonal relationships, generally fail to impart any meaningful understanding of how either an individual's mind works, or how the minds of those around him or her work. Similarly, existing products and services do not offer approaches which can address both (or, in may cases, either) ontogenetic and phylogenetic influences on thought processes. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for technology which can be used to help an individual to understand his or her own thought processes, and/or obtain other benefits such as raising an individual's level of conscious development.